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Kenya's parks and game reserves, dazzling though they are, can never include enough terrain to sustain the large herds of elephant, zebra, wildebeest and other migratory animals that are Africa's unique heritage.

An estimated 70 percent of Kenya's wildlife lives on private or communal land at any one time. But land outside protected areas is filling up with farms and villages. Increasingly, wildlife is competing with people and their livestock for the same space and water causing resentment and sometimes violence.

Shrouded in mist and hanging moss, the mountain forests of the Virunga volcanoes are home to the magnificent mountain gorillas. The chain of eight volcanoes runs along the western branch of the Great Rift Valley, forming part of the border between Uganda, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) and Rwanda. These spectacular mountains and the nearby Bwindi Impenetrable National Park in Uganda are the last refuge of the mountain gorilla (Gorilla gorilla beringei), the world's most endangered primate. Only about 620 of these fabled creatures remain.

In 1979, AWF member Frank Rus, of Naperville, Ill., decided to make a trip that travel agents described as impossible, traveling the Congo River 1,100 miles from Kinshasa to the end of navigation, Kisingani. Zaire (now Democratic Republic of Congo) was broken down (in the words of one government official), accommodations were scarce, transportation was unreliable and taking 16mm camera equipment to film mountain gorillas into a country suspicious of all unfamiliar activities would be extremely difficult. Nevertheless, Frank went.

Conservationists and park officials have managed to protect the Virunga population of highly endangered mountain gorillas despite protracted conflict in and around their habitat, the mountains where Congo-Kinshasa meets Rwanda and Uganda. The population of this group, one of two groups left in the world, has increased by at least 11 percent since the last full count in 1989.